Arnold Addison was born in February 1922 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He was the sixth of nine children, and although the family lived for a short while in Iowa, Louisiana, he grew up mostly in Lake Charles. Addison's father was a dairy farmer, and also worked as a painter and paperhanger contractor. He followed his grandfather around the farm, and enjoyed country living as a child. He admitted being responsible for a house fire when he was a small boy. One of the women in his family was a "Rosie the Riveter" in a California aircraft factory, and later became a pilot. She is featured in The National WWII Museum under the name Mable Addison. Although, he earned his GED [Annotator's Note: General Education Diploma for high school equivalency] after service, Addison dropped out of school during seventh grade to help support his family by selling and delivering newspapers. He recalls being at a church service when he learned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It happened on the same day he met his future wife. Like his older brother before him, Addison enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was 20 years old.

Against his older brother's advice, Arnold Addison joined the Marine Corps. He remembers that when he started boot camp in San Diego, California, the new recruits were welcomed with the chant "you'll be sorry." But Addison said he never was sorry. He went to tank training in San Diego and was deployed on 20 January 1943 with the 10th Replacement Battalion, headed for Guadalcanal. On the way, they learned that Guadalcanal had been secured, so his transport ship docked for three days at Noumea, New Caledonia before proceeding to Wellington, New Zealand. There, Addison was assigned to a different tank battalion and continued training for a few months. When the 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division needed machine gunner replacements, Addison was assigned a platoon in Company H [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division]. The unit saw combat on Tarawa, and it was there, Addison said, that a sniper shot a hole through his can of meat and beans. Addison noted that the many small islands surrounding Tarawa were so close that the soldiers, as well as the enemy, could wade from one to the other, and the combat action was a scramble. At one point he had to take a wounded buddy to the first aid station under sniper fire, but the whole affair was over by the third day. After a few days, the regiment returned to Guadalcanal for more training. From Tarawa, Addison was sent to Hilo, Hawaii for further training. A news correspondent interviewed him about his close calls, and Addison related his "meat and bean can" and other stories.

Arnold Addison saw combat on Tarawa, Saipan and Okinawa. His first encounter with the Japanese on Tarawa brought to his mind the childhood games he used to play with homemade pistols. Trough advanced training he graduated from those make believe battles to the job that had to be done. Although he "wasn't scared, necessarily," he didn't like the idea of having to be there. On Tarawa, wading waist deep from island to island, he was approached by a native who wanted to help, and said, "Americans Number One; Japanese no good." However, when the firing started, the native disappeared. Addison carried an M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand] on Tarawa; later he was issued a carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine], which he thought was a better weapon. On Tarawa, bombing and shelling had stripped the foliage from the trees, on Saipan and Okinawa the jungle was still intact. After Tarawa, Addison went on to Guadalcanal as a member of the reserve troops that stayed ready for wherever they were needed. He said the battalion came together then, and got a new round patch. Once on Saipan, Addison had shells exploding close by, and remembers one occasion when he took cover in a shell crater. There were times when there were so many bullets flying by from machine gun fire that it sounded like a "bunch of bees." From Saipan he went to Hawaii to prepare for Okinawa.

As a machine gunner, Arnold Addison said he didn't often see the enemy face to face. He remembers firing tracer rounds on Okinawa when a Japanese soldier, the first live enemy he had seen, jumped out of the bushes near him. He turned his gun and without aiming put several bullets "right in him." It was a lucky shot. The next day, his unit [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division] went right past the dead body when they moved out. He had no idea of how many others he killed. Addison said that the members of the platoon got to be close friends, and laments that one night a buddy in the next foxhole had his throat cut by a Japanese soldier without anyone knowing it had happened. It was late in the war, and the fighting was getting fiercer as it got closer to the Japanese homeland. The 6th Marine Division killed and captured more of the island and enemy than all the others troops put together. They fought on Okinawa from D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day, or the date of the initial landings, for Okinawa was 1 April 1945] until the whole island was secured. Addison's company had a lot of casualties, and there came a point when it seemed that he was the only remaining member. The captain of an adjoining company promised him a write-up for the Bronze Star, but Addison never heard any more about it.

After the battle of Okinawa, Arnold Addison stayed on the island until the war was over. A few weeks after the war's end, he was on his way home. He was inclined stay in the Marines and go with his group [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division], it was supposed to go next to China, but Addison had been overseas 33 months and 13 days, and he was ready to go back to the United States. He was a corporal when he was discharged. Addison went to work as a dump truck driver, and later as a painter. He never used the G.I. Bill. He stayed friends with two Marines from nearby towns that he served with during the war. Together they helped form a local Marine Corp League, in which Addison served as chaplain. He also helped form the American Legion post in Pitkin, Louisiana. Thinking back on his military service, he said he wouldn't take a million dollars in trade for the experience, but he wouldn't want to go through it again. He thinks that Americans have almost forgotten about the war, but lately veterans are getting a lot more recognition.